Notes

1] Begun in the spring of 1822, unfinished at the time of Shelley's death on July 8, and first published in Posthumous Poems (1824) from a MS. (now in the Bodleian library), whose corrections, omitted words, passages of unrevised improvisation, difficult hand, and long inaccessibility forestalled the establishment of an accurate text. Donald H. Reiman resolved these difficulties and accurately edited the poem from a Bodleian Library manuscript in 1965. Every authoritative text of this poem is owing to his edition since that time.The reference to Dante's Divine Comedy in lines 471-76 and to Petrarch's Triumphs in the title (both of which, like The Triumph of Life, are written in terza rima stanzas) suggests two probable models for the poem. Back to Line

134] Of Athens or Jerusalem. Commentators assume that the renouncing figures of which Shelley is thinking are Socrates in Athens and Jesus in Jerusalem. But the corruption of the text here makes any interpretation doubtful. Back to Line

190] Grim Feature: a reminiscence of Paradise Lost, X, 279, where it represents Death and carries the Latin meaning of "factura" or "creature." Back to Line

204] Rousseau. Compare Byron's portrait of Rousseau in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, III, lxxvii-lxxxii. Back to Line

236] Frederick and Paul, Catherine and Leopold: Frederick the Great of Prussia, Czar Paul and Catherine the Great of Russia, and Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire. Back to Line

254] Plato. In the lines which follow, Shelley refers to the legend that Plato in his old age fell in love with a boy, whose name, Aster, is Greek for a star as well as for a particular (and short-lived) flower. Back to Line

261] The tutor and his pupil: Aristotle and Alexander the Great. Back to Line

283] The heirs of Caesar's crime from him to Constantine. Julius Caesar's crime was to undermine the Roman republic and prepare the way for the Roman emperors ("anarch chiefs" in 286), a procession of which up to Constantine Shelley now observes. Back to Line

288] Gregory and John. "Gregory the Great is appropriate, as the true founder of the independent political power of the papacy. Which of many Johns is involved, there is no way of telling" (H. Bloom). Back to Line

421] The soft note in which his dear lament the Brescian shepherd breathes. "The favourite song, 'Stanco di pascolar le peccorelle, [being weary of pasturing the little sheep], is a Brescian national air" (Mrs. Shelley's note). Back to Line